RADEKMACHINE
A conversation with Petr Bystrov
by Marco Scotini

-Radek is the name of a revolutionary, Radek is the title of a magazine, Radek is an artistic and activist group; Radek is a precise moment in the recent Russian cultural scene (I’m referring to the map you presented in Berlin last year for “Disobedience”). I have the notion of a sort of deleuzean machine in front of me.
In brief, what is Radek Community?

Actually, the Radek phenomenon has many roots. From a philosophical point of view, Radek can be seen as a rhizome, a strange configuration of different organs, pieces, ideas combined together to form a common one, a whole ‘something’. It is in this way that Radek became the proper territory where several completely different powers gather. Just to give you a few examples, 1) Nestor Makhno - that we never met - the leader of the anarchistic movement in Ukraine during the Civil War. 2) Michel Foucault, one of the most politically engaged intellectuals in Europe, who, of course, stayed apart from the group. 3)The Sex Pistols, etc., etc. Our activities are always based on a kind of intellectual incest. The phenomenon we call Radek could be considered a precedent, something that never happened before: we understood the contemporary philosophy as a potentially social practice; every cultural action is always deeply connected to the theoretical reflection upon realizing things in a public field.
Philosophy could be used for very practical aims; every theory is – following the metaphor of Gilles Deleuze - just a box with special tools in it: it must work, otherwise it is not philosophy.

-Beginning from the notion of “community”, your group has tried to individualise the communicative act in its original significance of “commonality”, of “putting it in common”.
Naturally outside of unanimity of the former socialism and outside of the consensus of mass culture in the free market. You have realized illusory political demonstrations, like in Moscow in 2000, or virtual sound communities, like the “Accord” action. You have also presented compulsive collectivizations with your Scotch-parties (Sellotape-parties) improvised everywhere.

The central question for us was always about the meaning of collective work: what is the core of a group dimension? What are the reasons people gather together, become crowds? We were interested in catching every opportunity to create/recognise a collective, even if on very different bases. There is actually a certain level of consciousness in people gathering together; they do so if they have similar protesting ideas, if they belong to the same national minority or the like. Still, there is as well a level of unconsciousness involved in the process. What I mean is that individuals gather in groups not only for thought-through reasons. In Moscow, for instance, you can feel an awkward energy coming from the multitude waiting at the traffic light to cross the street.

-Recently in the magazine “Chto delat?”(What is to be done?) you have taken sides against the rhetoric of “democratism” and “internationalism” of the world-wide process of globalisation.
You also said that real politics, such as hunger, have no language. I’m thinking about the action “Hunger strike without demands” conceived for “Beautiful banners” at the first Prague Biennale.

I do not trust such things as democratism or liberalism. I actually doubt their existence. As far as I can understand, it seems more a question of the so-called branding: there is a market where to get money for every brand, it’s easy to see the tendency of social fashion in social field. About “Hunger strike”, I can just shortly say that our concept was asking questions, not answering the ‘ready-made’ questions given from the state, the government, institutions. Questioning self-identity is important, but one does not have to stick to the idea of choosing an identity among given ones. That is why we manipulated the usual process of going on a hunger strike. People are starving, but they do not have reasons for the act. It is, in this way, out of branding, precisely not fashion.

- And so which idea of community is possible in the age – as Negri and Virno call it – of the multitude?

I absolutely do not believe in big trends like “anti-globalism” or the like. Radek never dealt with wide movements like worker movements or anti-globalism. We are not pretending to be a mirror of every social phenomenon. It always works, though, with a concrete life situation perceived as “my own problem”. Radek has always aimed to be some sort of parallel reality. We have kept on working with the mood of the first Radek generation that belonged to the so-called Moscow-actionism. It is difficult to get a straight picture of the body of Radek if one wants to look at it as a hierarchy. An arm is moving, its brain is sleeping, one eye is opened, the other is closed. In our group we have always been dealing with loads of projects, many making up organizations and institutions (Non-Governmental Control Committee, Against All, Expropriation of the Territory of Art E.T.A.), plenty in collaboration with persons who are vital for Radek. I name just some of them: Anatoly Osmolovsky, Avdey Ter-Oganyan, Kirill Preobrazhenskij. Each one of them is a man and a phenomenon at the same time.

- Maybe this is the reason why your last exhibitions tend to encourage a common platform on which each Radek member performs his work according to his individual way, instead of converging in a unique and exclusive project as at the beginning.
I am thinking of the “Radek Invasion” show, but also of this exhibition conceived for Play_ gallery for still and motion pictures. What is the exhibition concerned about? Can you explain it?

It is time to start having pleasure not from hiding behind the idea of a group. In some situations we still like to be anonymous, unrecognisable as individuals. But it also makes sense working together when everybody feels all-sufficient. Or should I call this “self-enough”? We are exhibiting together because we have a lot of common subjects. In this very case, the main common interest is what can be described as the paradoxical relations between WHAT you see (a picture, a subject) and WHY or HOW you see it (a composition, a drama inside it). Some works might be "political" or not, "entertaining" or not. Still, the focus is analytical - as we research the interaction between any shown situation (or scene) and the reality behind it.
Is reality a "neutral" phenomenon which can be easily represented with an image? Does a picture give us a "key" to the reality it shows? So each artwork includes an analytical trick concerning this type of questions.

- You have stated that you are mainly known as performance artists or activists, but for this exhibition at Play you won't carry out any action. In this sense you suggest to read the title “Re-action” as ‘absence of action’. Is there anything else? What does Re-action really mean?

Well, Re-action means anti-action as well as over-action. Somehow I like more the second interpretation. When you perform, you kind of think that this is the form of expression that gives you the most freedom to be yourself: as realistic, experimental, creative and sincere as you can be. But, please, don’t associate video-installation (the works exhibited in the “Re-action” show will mostly be videos) with being conservative. We remain what we were, just with the support of another medium. Actually, every art work that will be presented in “Re-action” is a performance - with its flavour and aesthetics - driven or drawn, though, with the help of video. With this series of new works we aim at interacting with the visitors as if they are witnesses in the gallery of something happening here and now, in front of them.